How-To
Paid Inclusion 101
What is paid inclusion and why is it important? by Dave Pasternack
Jul 24, 2004
Paid inclusion has returned to the spotlight, with Yahoo!’s relatively recent Site Match program, which merged its six separate paid inclusion programs into one unified program. With so much of the search space devoted to free listings, paid inclusion is a great way to make sure your listings don’t get ignored. Now that we’ve established how important paid inclusion is, here is a quick refresher on the types of paid inclusion and how they work.
Paid inclusion comes in three varieties, Directory Inclusion, Direct Inclusion (AKA per-URL inclusion) and XML Paid Inclusion (also known as Trusted Feed). It is important to remember that paid inclusion of all types does not guarantee a position, only inclusion. In reality, any paid inclusion listing or URL will get clicks on a variety of keyword combinations, just as a natural organic search listing would. When you build a page of your site, you may have particular terms and phrases that you hope to get traffic on, but chances are your organic traffic comes from a variety of phrases. The databases that make up the search index from which the listing is pulled are agnostic as to whether the listing was paid or not (at least that is the position maintained by all the vendors).
XML Paid Inclusion
Larger sites have the advantage of XML Paid Inclusion, which takes their sites (often dynamically generated sites that are never visited by most search engine spiders) and converts those sites into a data stream or document very similar to what a search engine spider would have collected. These individual data elements for each page are then fed directly into the search engine databases as if the spider had in fact collected the data.
XML feeds can be created in two ways:
- The database that drives the website can be dumped into a format that is easy for a XML-enabled search engine marketing agency (reseller) to work with.
- The agency can spider the site with a spider that is more aggressive than a typical search engine spider would be, one that can more easily identify the endless loops generated by URLs that track a visitor's progress. After the raw data for all the pages is collected some vendors will machine-enhance the data to make up for situations such as mission or repetitive, non-representative title tags. Others teams will review the XML feed document manually, and some agencies will do both.
The advantages of the XML form of Paid Inclusion
The site and their agency/reseller controls which information on a page is submitted. There is often a large quantity of copy on a page; when a spider visits, it will take its best guess as to the pertinent information. When an XML feed is created, the marketer and agency can determine which information is best to include in the feed. This decision process can be automated or manual, or a combination of both. Sometimes a word or phrase in the body copy of the page poorly represents the page to a potential visitor and by removing that phrase or word, the user experience is improved.
For XML paid inclusion, cost is on a CPC, performance basis. Of course there is always a possibility that it is cheaper to use per-URL inclusion for a high volume page; however, the added control for XML paid inclusion normally far outweighs cost concerns.
Freshness
XML feeds are updated more regularly than organic spider based results (unpaid), so if you have changing content XML is a great way to make sure the time lag to inclusion is as short as possible.
The XML form of Paid Inclusion provides the ability to edit or remove poorly performing listings. Sometimes a particular XML listing will generate good volume, but conversion behavior is poor. When that happens, the XML can be edited or that listing removed. Not all XML paid inclusion partners have the ability to edit highly performing listings. When a listing is working, perhaps a change of one or two words on the landing page and the XML feed can improve efficiency from both a volume and conversion basis.
The Pareto Effect
Just like organic SEO, a small number of pages in your XML paid inclusion feed will generate most of the search volume. That makes these pages particularly important. How well is the traffic from these pages converting? What is the ROI? Could these XML feeds be edited to more accurately represent the landing page while still maintaining volume and conversion?
Conversely, there may be XML feed listings that you feel are very important and should get good visibility and traffic, but don't. Perhaps the copy on both your site and the representative XML feed is poor from a search marketing perspective. Luckily, there are ways to address that as well. The question becomes one of ROI on the labor. To decide the ROI on copy and XML SEO, you need to understand the value of a visitor and the conversion behavior of visitors in general, as well as on the page in question. So, if you are doing any other paid search, such as Overture and Google, use conversion data on that segment of the campaign to get a rough idea as to the likelihood of success.
There is no doubt that XML paid inclusion is going to be increasingly important in the future as more and more sites are built on dynamic platforms. These dynamic pages may change regularly; only XML paid inclusion combines all the benefits of control with freshness and coverage.
Talk to your reseller about your objectives, the structure of your site and your specific needs, and they will help you determine if XML paid inclusion is right for you.